NewEnergyNews: Guest Lead Post: NOTHING MORE NON-PARTISAN THAN NEW ENERGY/

NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

The challenge now: To make every day Earth Day.

YESTERDAY

THINGS-TO-THINK-ABOUT WEDNESDAY, August 23:

  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And The New Energy Boom
  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And the EV Revolution
  • THE DAY BEFORE

  • Weekend Video: Coming Ocean Current Collapse Could Up Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Impacts Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current Collapse
  • Weekend Video: More Facts On The AMOC
  • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 15-16:

  • Weekend Video: The Truth About China And The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Florida Insurance At The Climate Crisis Storm’s Eye
  • Weekend Video: The 9-1-1 On Rooftop Solar
  • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 8-9:

  • Weekend Video: Bill Nye Science Guy On The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: The Changes Causing The Crisis
  • Weekend Video: A “Massive Global Solar Boom” Now
  • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 1-2:

  • The Global New Energy Boom Accelerates
  • Ukraine Faces The Climate Crisis While Fighting To Survive
  • Texas Heat And Politics Of Denial
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    Founding Editor Herman K. Trabish

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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, June 17-18

  • Fixing The Power System
  • The Energy Storage Solution
  • New Energy Equity With Community Solar
  • Weekend Video: The Way Wind Can Help Win Wars
  • Weekend Video: New Support For Hydropower
  • Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, Agua Dulce, CA., Doctor with my hands, Writer with my head, Student of New Energy and Human Experience with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

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      A tip of the NewEnergyNews cap to Phillip Garcia for crucial assistance in the design implementation of this site. Thanks, Phillip.

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    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

  • ---------------
  • WEEKEND VIDEOS, August 24-26:
  • Happy One-Year Birthday, Inflation Reduction Act
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 1
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 2

    Monday, June 27, 2011

    Guest Lead Post: NOTHING MORE NON-PARTISAN THAN NEW ENERGY

    Today’s Guest Lead Post is from columnist-contributor Anne B. Butterfield. If anyone can find a better opening paragraph or a better application of the lessons learned from Weiner-Gate, alert the Pulitizer Prize nominations committee.

    Some insiders have questioned whether Anne’s challenge to conservative Republicans is the best approach to finding a way forward. It is certainly a legitimate question. Building bridges is always better than blowing them up.

    On the other hand, sometimes it is the other side that is blowing up the bridges. The first thing is to identify who is using explosives. That’s what Anne does here.

    The Old Energies were never going to toss the grid’s keys to New Energy and say “you drive, kid.”

    Instead, there is a fight for the energy policy direction this great nation will take. It is between those who cannot see the future and those who understand that there is a better way than dependence on oil owned by greedy bullies and electricity-generating sources that come with choking and radioactive impacts.

    The logic of New Energy is undeniable. Anybody who takes an unprejudiced look at it, unswayed by vested interests, is inevitably convinced. It is a logic that, as Anne points out below, has lately won over a powerful ally dedicated to stopping the bad guys who are blowing up the bridges.


    Lamborn's Anti-Energy Boondoggle and Republican Failure to Grasp Renewable Energy
    Anne B. Butterfield, June 27, 2011 (Boulder Daily Camera)

    Congressman Anthony Weiner is the most recent politician to tweet himself down the political toilet with photos that are tacky and gross. But for mind-boggling inappropriateness, Weiner's spree was topped by a fully naked toot of political pandering on behalf of fossil fuels.

    And it was done by Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs when he tried to eliminate all funding for Colorado's National Renewable Energy Laboratories. NREL employs 2,300 people and, with the help of over a hundred million in private contracts, it boosts our state's economy by over $700 million.

    Lamborn's gesture was made within weeks of voting to maintain billions in subsidies for big oil companies. Joining a team of nine Republicans asking for the complete dismantling of the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy which funds NREL, he signed a letter to a House subcommittee with this bit of jaw-dropping nonsense: "We should not follow the president's poor planning in increasing the funding for these anti-energy boondoggles."

    click to enlarge

    Anti-energy? Perhaps the thought is that efficiency is anti-energy -- even though every family, and especially companies like WalMart, know that the cheapest energy is the energy you don't need in the first place. Remember that, conservatives?

    Walmart has pledged to be efficient and sustainable throughout its operations and supply chain, with milestones such as saving $25 million per year by installing devices that limit truck idling, and selling 100 million CFLs in 2007, which would save customers about $3 billion in electricity, enough to power the city of Philadelphia. To know more about Walmart and other Fortune 100 companies raking profits through sustainability, read Climate Capitalism by my friend Hunter Lovins.

    However, with few exceptions, today's Republican mind seems to be stuck in Dick Cheney's basement, where if you don't toe the pro-fossils, pro-consumption line you're liable to get shot in the face. Really, the free market of lobbying has spoken: the flow of campaign riches from fossil fuels to Republican officials is three times that given to Democrats.

    click to enlarge

    Since the mid terms, the Republican stand seems to be that more oil is better and damn the climate and all the fuss about spills. And to heck with asthma and other chronic ailments directly linked to automotive pollution -- which along with coal use is bloating our nation's health care costs by hundreds of billions per year according to two well-funded studies (see here and here). And those costs pour directly over to our deficits.

    On the president's aim for this nation to seize the energy "Sputnik moment," Lamborn's said: "I welcome the president's desire to have more energy, but a lot of his plan is based on tried and failed strategies in the past," adding that renewable energy "is not something that is available yet and is more wishful thinking."

    This is a deeply addled statement for a Colorado pol whose state saw economic growth in only one sector lately -- clean energy. And his party's most dependable source of electoral votes for presidential races, the great state of Texas, is the planet's sixth largest source of wind power. Texas gets one-twelfth of its power from wind turbines, in a program started by Governor George W. Bush.

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    The disconnect between Mr. Lamborn and political reality deepens when one considers that his voting district and funding base are dominated by military personnel and defense contractors. The reality here is that the US military has targeted a goal of 50 percent renewable power by 2020, and energy efficiency is high on the list because the US military uses nearly 80 percent of the federal government's energyconsumption. Bases in this nation are now installing solar capacity in the hundreds of megawatts; and the Air Force Academy in Lamborn's district now gains 11 percent of its power from a newly commissioned solar field. The Academy has a goal of 100 percent renewable energy in 2020.

    And some outposts in the Middle East are now powered and cooled with solar electricity, with some marines sporting solar panels on their packs so they can carry less in the way of batteries for their high-tech equipment, and in turn they can carry more ammo.

    So Mr. Lamborn, who's the new defense contractor in town? Solar companies.

    click to enlarge

    And which lab in Colorado has numerous contracts with Department of Defense installations in Colorado Springs, to enhance their energy performance with renewables and micro grids? NREL.

    The hue and cry from Coloradans over Lamborn's lame error has been so sharp -- from all corners -- that Lamborn has made an immediate though transparently lame correction. He has said he didn't know that NREL was funded by the EERE department of DOE. D'oh!

    Well he can run, but he cannot hide; the Pentagon, which rules the military chunk of his district, has announced its intention to reorder its operations with goals and protocols to get away from the use of oil in a plan called Operational Energy Strategy. Research from Pike Research has drilled down in this development, finding that "officials up and down the chain of command at DoD have been forthcoming about the need for the U.S. military to transition out of oil and into safer and more readily available forms of energy," according to Reuters.

    click to enlarge

    The military's need for renewable power is clear -- it's to push back on oil dependency for distant bases where transporting oil is a distinct killer of troops. Such oil costs from $20 to $1000 per gallon and comprises between 30-80 percent of every convoy's load.

    On another economic note, thanks to Republican disdain for investing in renewable and efficient technologies through consistent policy such as a national renewable energy standard, or a ten or twenty-year production tax credit, US competitiveness is losing out. Governments of Europe, Asia and Latin America have supported this sector and are now exporting their goods and expertise into the States.

    Lanborn has spoken of renewable energy research needing to stand on its own two feet, but big oil can still lean heavily like a drunken lover. His twisted position that's right in keeping with his party's is more embarrassing than Anthony Weiner's -- with the added effect of being outright dangerous. It's time we use words like anti-American.

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